Marxist Workers Tendency of the ANC
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Workers and Socialist Party
|
|
|---|---|
 |
|
| Leader | Weizmann Hamilton |
| Spokesperson | Mametlwe Sebei |
| Founded |
Marxist Workers Tendency |
| Newspaper |
Inqaba Ya Basebenzi |
| Student wing | Socialist Youth Movement |
| Ideology |
Marxism Socialism Trotskyism |
| Political position | Far-left |
| International affiliation | Committee for a Workers' International |
| Colours | Red |
| Website | |
| Workerssocialistparty.co.za | |
Marxist Workers Tendency
1979-1996
Socialist Alternative
1996
Democratic Socialist Movement
1996-2015
Workers and Socialist Party
Inqaba Ya Basebenzi
1981-1989
Congress Militant
1990-1996
Izwi Labasebenzi
The Workers and Socialist Party (WASP) is a Marxist and Trotskyist political party in South Africa affiliated to the Committee for a Workers' International.
WASP began life as the Marxist Workers Tendency (MWT), operating inside the African National Congress (ANC) from 1979. The MWT was founded by activists who had helped build independent trade unions and participated in the 1973 Durban strike wave and youth from the Black Consciousness movement. Active both in exile and within South Africa the MWT was an affiliate of the Committee for a Workers International (CWI) participating with them in the struggle for socialism worldwide. This included fighting for direct links between the international labour movement and South Africa's emerging independent trade unions that later formed the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu).
The MWT published the journal Inqaba Ya Basebenzi in exile for circulation underground in South Africa between 1981 and 1990 and later, following the ANC's unbanning, the newspaper Congress Militant published inside the country.
The MWT raised the slogan “For a mass ANC on a socialist programme” with no illusions that the pro-capitalist ANC leadership would ever commit to a socialist programme. Rather, the MWT oriented toward the ANC because at that stage the mass of the working class looked toward it for unity in the struggle against apartheid. But the MWT explained that the only way genuine national liberation and economic freedom for the black working class majority could be achieved, including the Freedom Charter’s demands for free education, free healthcare, welfare and workers’ rights, was on the basis of a socialist revolution and the nationalisation of the commanding heights of the economy - the banks, the mines, the commercial farms, big factories and big businesses - under democratic working class control.
The MWT worked for the independent organisation of the working class within the ANC and openly criticised the leadership. This resulted in four of its leading members' suspension in 1979 and expulsion from the ANC without a hearing in 1985.
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